Chapter XXXIII: Winning the First Battle of the War

THE WAR AGAINST DISEASE FOUGHT AND WON BY MEDICAL
DEPARTMENT--GENERAL ORDER NO. 99--SAFETY ZONES
ESTABLISHED--HOSPITALS OVERSEAS--SKY PILOT LEADERSHIP--COÖPERATION
OF VOLUNTEER WELFARE ORGANIZATIONS--NAVAL OFFENDERS HELPED TO FIND
THEMSELVES.

The death rate in the Navy by disease in 1917-18 was the lowest in the history of wars. Sickness, until the influenza epidemic, was less than in peace time. The loss of days by immoral disease decreased below the rate prevailing before the war. Preventive medicine, and war against disease and vice gave a record to the Navy Medical Corps which is a tribute alike to them and to the profession to which they belong.

No branch of the military service was more forehanded and no officer saw more clearly the possible needs that war would entail or made ampler provision for them than the Surgeon General of the Navy, Admiral William C. Braisted, who in recognition of his distinguished service was given the privilege of retirement by a special act of Congress. He was later elected president of the American Medical Association.

"The first battle of the war, that against disease, was won by the Medical Department of the Navy," reported the House Naval Affairs Committee.

When I was pressing for large appropriations for the Medical Department of the Navy, the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee asked me:

"Mr. Secretary, do you really think there is proof of the absolute need for the whole of the large amount asked for by the Surgeon General?"

"I do not," was my reply.

"Then why are you here urging the appropriation of so large a sum?" he asked.

"For the same reason," I replied, "that will cause you to appropriate it."

He looked at me with some astonishment and I added:

I have not the information that justifies so large an expenditure;
nobody has. The Surgeon General, who is a wise and economical
administrator, has estimated that under certain contingencies this
money will be required. I cannot see into the future. If there are
no unforeseen casualties and no epidemics, we will neither need nor
spend the money. But if the possible in war happens, and some great
disaster or far-reaching epidemic befalls us, what could I say to
the fathers and mothers of the Republic if I had disapproved the
recommendation of the Surgeon General, and what would they say of
you and the Congress if you refused to vote the appropriation? The
sum may seem too large to you or to me. It is, if past experience
can be depended upon. But in war, in matters of battles and wounds
and death and possible epidemics, our duty is to make large
provision in the hope that it may not all be needed.

The Chairman, zealous to win the war and to give every aid, led the fight for the large appropriation.

The administration at Washington, charged with the conduct of the war, early realized that health was the foundation of military efficiency, that health was dependent upon clean living, and that protection of men in uniform from drink and disease was the prime duty owed to them, to their parents, and to the world dependent, in the last analysis, upon their fitness to fight. Ignorance, intemperance and indifference were the first foes to be faced in 1917.

The war broke precedents. The first broken was to override the ancient theory that Government has nothing to do with the private life of a fighter and no duty to protect him from immoral surroundings. Our Government recognized that "the single man in khaki ain't no plaster saint." As the youths poured into the training camps, harpies set up their joints hard by. For the first time in history the Government said to them: "Thou shalt not." It drove them and their establishments from the vicinity of stations and camps.

Authority was given by Congress for the Chief Executive to establish zone systems for protection of camps. President Wilson established zones wherever sailors, soldiers, or marines were undergoing training. Appeals were made to state and local authorities for assistance. Writing early in 1917 to the Governor of Rhode Island, where military efficiency was jeopardized by failure to enforce laws, I said:

There lies upon us morally, to a degree far outreaching any
technical responsibility, the duty of leaving nothing undone to
protect these young men from that contamination of their bodies
which will not only impair their military efficiency but * * *
return them to their homes a source of danger to their families and
the community at large.

Seeking his hearty coöperation, I reminded this executive that these dangers were bad enough in ordinary times, but were multiplied manifold in times of war when great bodies of men are necessarily gathered together away from the restraints of home and under the stress of emotions and reaction which tend to dislodge the standards of normal life.

A Commission on Training Camp Activities, headed by Mr. Raymond Fosdick, led in the welfare work, extending from the home to the trenches and turrets. The other members were:

John J. Eagan, Vice Chairman, Clifford W. Barnes, Lieutenant
Richard E. Byrd, U. S. N., Walter Camp, Selah Chamberlain, Lee F.
Hanmer, Joseph Lee, Lieutenant Commander Claude B. Mayo, U. S. N.,
E. T. Meredith, Barton Myers, Charles P. Neill, Mrs. Helen Ring
Robinson, Mrs. Finley J. Shepard, Mrs. Daisy McLaurin Stevens, Mrs.
Edward T. Stotesbury, John S. Tichenor, Dean C. Mathews, Secretary,
Marion M. Jackson, Field Secretary.

The multitude of religious and social agencies, anxious to serve, made it necessary for the Government to give its imprimatur to certain organized forces whose benefactions justified such recognition. I refer to the Red Cross, Young Men's Christian Association, Young Women's Christian Association, Knights of Columbus, Young Hebrew Association, Salvation Army and American Library Association. They coöperated cordially with Army and Navy authorities.

The inspiration and leadership of the religious and welfare work of the Navy came from its corps of chaplains. There had been no addition to the number of the corps for forty years before 1914. The increase gave a "sky pilot" for every great ship and every important station. Additions in the regular and reserve corps when war came enabled the Navy to supply religious direction by consecrated men of every creed. They went with the Marines into Belleau Wood, with Rodman's fleet in the North Sea, guided the new recruits on sea and shore--faithful, devoted spiritual leaders in days when men unafraid looked death in the face. These soldiers of the cross were comrades in battle, shipmates in storm, and comforters in death.

In 1914 an order was issued known as "General Order 99" prohibiting the introduction of intoxicants as a beverage on any ship or station in the Navy. That temperance order was in these words:

_General Order No. 99_

Navy Department
Washington, D. C., June 1, 1914.

On July 1, 1914, article 827, Naval Instructions, will be annulled,
and in its stead the following will be substituted:

"The use or introduction for drinking purposes of alcoholic liquors
on board any naval vessel, or within any navy yard or station,
is strictly prohibited, and commanding officers will be held
responsible for the enforcement of this order."

JOSEPHUS DANIELS,
Secretary of the Navy.

This was recommended by the Surgeon General of the Navy. If not universally popular when it was promulgated, when war came it was recognized that it had contributed to the fitness of the naval personnel. The zone system of excluding drink and houses of ill fame from training places, laws prohibiting the sale of liquor to any man in uniform, war-time prohibition, and finally the ratifying of the national prohibition amendment to the Constitution evidenced the progressive steps taken for protection of men in uniform.

With the coming of war, plans made long before were put into effect. Permanent hospitals were enlarged and temporary hospitals built to make ready for the large expansion in personnel. The bed capacity within eight months was increased from 3,850 to 15,689, and before the end of the war to over 19,000. Four hospitals were established in Great Britain. One was at Strathpeffer, Scotland, in easy communication with the Grand Fleet and the bases established by the North Sea mining groups. It was magnificently located and splendidly equipped, and proved of great service to the British Navy as well as our own. Another at Leith was near one of the North Sea bases, and a third was established at Queenstown, the chief base of our destroyers operating with the British. Early in the war two base hospital units were sent to Brest. Dispensaries and hospitals were established in the Mediterranean at Corfu, in Italy, France, Gibraltar and the Azores. Three hospital ships were in service commanded by medical officers, who, as President Roosevelt wisely said, should always be in command of hospital ships.

When the armistice was signed the Navy was ready to bring back from France 30,000 sick and wounded men per month. Wherever men of the Navy and Marine Corps were on duty in Europe, naval medical officers were with them with all equipment needed. The personnel of the Medical Corps increased from 353 doctors to 3,093; from 34 to 485 dentists; woman nurses from 160 to 1,713; members of the Hospital Corps from 1,585 to 16,564. Into the Medical Reserve came many of the ablest men in the profession. To the regulars and the reserves, the woman nurses and the hospital corps, went out the gratitude of the men wounded and ill to whom they administered unselfishly. Private John C. Geiger, a Marine, who lost his right foot as a result of a wound in Belleau Wood, voiced the feeling of all fighting men when he said:

But I want to give credit to those hospital corps men of the Navy,
who worked with the Marines. Those fellows deserve a gold medal qr
the highest award they can receive. Why, before we could reach our
objective, they were right out on the field picking up and tagging
the wounded. They didn't mind the danger and did their duty without
protection of any kind. They were unarmed and could not shoot a
German if they did run across one.

With the arrangements by which the Navy was to man the transports, a new and unexpected duty, it became necessary for the Medical Corps to expand its personnel and undertake a service that called for discretion and judgment as well as medical skill. Never in the history of troop movements have troops been so well taken care of, their health protected in every possible manner, the sanitary precautions provided, and such attention and elaborate provision made for the care of the sick and wounded. The larger transports were indeed combined transports and hospital ships.

This transport work was taken over and performed entirely by the Medical Department of the Navy without extra appropriation and without expense to the Army. Every contingency was met. The provisions were ample for the care of sick troops in transit, and there were returned on naval transports, 151,649 Army sick, wounded and insane; 4,385 Navy; and 3,625 Marines from the expeditionary forces in France.

The Navy always put the man before the gun. If a member of the Navy did wrong, we sought to save him. Two thousand men, punished for offenses committed, were restored during the war, and most of them made good. This was possible by the restoration of morale through the Mutual Welfare League organized in naval prisons. It was an experiment that contravened all former military methods, and was inaugurated by Thomas Mott Osborne. Desiring to substitute modern penology for the methods in vogue, I requested Mr. Osborne to become head of the naval prison, and he was commissioned as lieutenant commander in the Reserves. In the League he gave a large measure of self government to prisoners. He used discipline as a means of helping young men to find themselves, and its success was most encouraging. Too much honor cannot be given him.

"Treat men as pawns and nine-pins," said Emerson, "and you shall suffer as well as they. If you leave out their heart you shall lose your own." It was that spirit, as well as the disuse of bread and water and solitary confinement and other ancient punishments, which made naval discipline the pattern for dealing with military offenders.

There was no "hard boiled" discipline tolerated in the Navy. Courts-martial were reviewed in a spirit of meting out justice, with consideration and discrimination, as well as mercy. Admiral George R. Clark, Judge Advocate General during most of the war, set new standards of military court procedure and lessened the rigors of punishment.